DESCRIPTION: How did the Civil War change the course of American medicine? This project will answer this question through an examination of both medical events during the war, and the transformation of American medicine in the decades that followed. Its approach takes the broad view, encompassing the history of hospitals, public health, disease incidence, therapeutic practices, nursing, medical theory, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry, concepts of race, and drug addiction. There is no comparable work in the historical literature. Most social historians of nineteenth century medicine touch lightly on the war, if they discuss it at all, a phenomenon of more general works on social history as well. The mid-nineteenth century was a time of great change in medicine, and the challenge is to determine what the war accelerated, delayed, or affected not at all. The task is complicated by the need to analyze the similarities and differences of the two warring nations, and the ways in which their varied experiences played out in the postwar years. This study of the Civil War will explore the penetrating and persistent impact of war on American medical institutions.